


tu fui, ego eris

by makeshiftrolley



Series: The Dance of the Two Left Feet [6]
Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Established Relationship, Implied Sexual Content, Kidnapping, M/M, Minor Character Death, Minor Original Character(s), Minor Violence, Non-Pathfinder Ryder, Post-Canon, Puzzles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-23
Updated: 2018-06-23
Packaged: 2019-05-13 17:05:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 18,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14752856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/makeshiftrolley/pseuds/makeshiftrolley
Summary: Over a year has passed since Jean left the Pathfinder team and moved in with Reyes on Kadara. Their lives are filled with endless bliss, mostly until Jean is kidnapped by an enigmatic figure known only by a mask and a name. To save Jean, Reyes must follow their every order or else they'll kill him.To save Jean, how much does the Charlatan want to give?





	1. our love is a river

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time participating in the MEBB and my first long fic! It's actually made me feel every emotional.
> 
> Thank you to my collab partner, **ventorhu** for being awesome to work with. Thank you to **lexthemutt** for being an awesome beta! Thank you to **Morgan** for being there for me during the early stages of the fic and listening to my ideas.
> 
> And thank you to Azzy_Darling for hosting this!

 

 

Morning light spills from the blinds. Strips of light illuminate the room, creating patterns on the walls. A large one rests on Jean’s sleeping form, turning his skin burnished gold. Reyes wakes to the same sight every day and still he never tires of it. Dark lashes flutter open. Soft pupils greet him through half-lidded eyes. Watching him wake is more breathtaking than any daybreak Reyes has ever seen. He smiles. Jean climbs on his lap.

“Good morning,” he says and dips his head down to capture his lips. At first his kisses are soft, tethering between the edge of awake and asleep. Soon, it becomes heated-- _desperate_.

Between the slide of tongues, the small gasps for air and the soft moans making Reyes crave for the press of skin on skin, he manages. “Haven’t you had enough of me last night?”

Jean hums.

Good enough, Reyes thinks. He rolls them over so Jean under him like hours before, like their first, second, thirtieth. Reyes drags his thumb across the white stripe on his hair. Jean will chastise him for being fascinated on a mistake, a scar or the next ugly word Jean calls it.

(Reyes calls it beautiful like everything else about him).

Consciousness is not quite there when Reyes thrusts inside him. Their movements are unhurried like time has prolonged this moment to last. Jean’s eyes don’t leave him, growing as dark as the universe as he comes undone. His lips curl into a perfect ‘O’ when he climaxes. Reyes follows, losing himself in pure euphoria.

It takes them more than an hour to leave their bed, and another hour to leave the shower. Jean, insatiable, rewards him for the morning and the night before by going down on his knees and taking him in his mouth. Reyes gives in once more, clinging on dark strands, encouraging _more more more_.

He makes him feel--

He makes him _feel_ \--

Jean has a word for it in the one language they don’t share. Sometimes, it slips during the heat of passion, in-between desperate pleas and cries of his name. Sometimes, he says, “you make me feel…” What comes next is blurred by the translator, unable to comprehend or give a definitive meaning to it. Later, as they bask in the afterglow, he attempts to explain, using hands to give life to the word.

“It’s a feeling,” Jean says in the present, warm and sated. Damp black hair clings on his forehead; galaxy-like eyes look at him through half-lidded eyes and yes, yes, Reyes is falling. He plants sloppy kisses on Reyes’ shoulder, following a trail of droplets from his shoulder to his neck, and further still until their lips touch.

He makes him feel-ellipsis, period, end.

 

By noon, they lounge on the sofa. He stays and forwards any appointments to Keema or Crux. Jean lies on his lap. Since moving in with him last year, Jean has mostly been idle. The data pad lying on his chest has nothing-no blueprints nor endless text Reyes can never decode.

At sundown, he receives a message from Crux.

 

_Boss?_

_-Crux_

_To: Reyes Vidal_

_From: Kelainos Tiberius_

_Subject: Still in the business?_

_Still in the smuggling business, Vidal? Well if you are, and the big Boss let’s you earn some credits, I have a job for you._

_Or maybe, tell you what, do well in retrieving this shipment and I’ll give the Collective a quarter of the shipment-RemTech. You know, the kind of tech only the Pathfinder and Nexus have. Free of charge. Well, if you put in a good word for me to the Charlatan._

_Meet me at these coordinates before dawn tomorrow, if you still want the job._

_-Tiberius_

 

RemTech? Remnant Tech. Reyes has heard of it over drinks at Kralla’s with Jean and his Pathfinder sister, when Jean still had the title, _Recon Specialist_. None of it made sense then; none of it makes sense now. From what Reyes has inferred, the tech can give you an edge-better equipment, better weapons.

_To: Crux_

_From: C_

_Meet me at the rendezvous point. Bring Ferreira. Tell him Boss wants to train him._

 

_To: Kelainos Tiberius_

_From: Reyes Vidal_

_Tiberius, my friend, I haven’t left at all. The “big Boss” as you say has given me more responsibilities since Sloane was disposed._

_I’ll meet you at the rendezvous point._

_-Reyes Vidal_

 

“You have that look on your face,” Jean says, his lips curling into a playful smile.

Reyes grins. “What look?”

“A look telling me you’re plotting.”

“I’m not.”

Jean gets up and sits across from him, stretching his long legs on Reyes’ thighs. “You have a job, don’t you?” He arches an eyebrow.

Reyes regards the accusatory gesture. He draws his lips in a grim line, knowing where this leads next.

“Yes, yes, I do.”

“Can I come?” Jean phrases the words as a complaint rather than a question.

“No,” Reyes says. He’s apologetic for everything, truly. From before Meridian, in a cave somewhere in the middle of the Badlands where Jean gave him the same accusatory gesture, to after. Six weeks of a second coma, the never ending tubes protruding from his body and the silent moments in the dark, when all Reyes can do is hold his hand. He remembers everything, and everything stops him from giving what Jean wants.

“Thought so.”

“Jean, you have to understand-”

“Understand what?” He crosses his arms. “Kadara’s dangerous for me? You know I can flay people with my mind.”

Well, he’s right. Jean is a capable shot, a tech genius and a biotic. He’s the perfect soldier the Alliance boasts.

“No, it isn’t that,” Reyes sighs. Soldiers aren’t made of steel. They break and Jean has suffered a terrible fall. For a year, Reyes has helped him mend the pieces. A year later, Reyes feels he hasn’t tried.

“This is about Meridian isn’t it.”

“Jean.”

Reyes reaches across, and cups the curve of his neck, sliding his hand to his nape. He pulls him close; their foreheads touch and Jean crumbles in his arms.

“I didn’t die on Meridian,” he murmurs, the words trembling while they fall from his lips.

He didn’t.

He _almost_.

And Reyes fears _almost_ -a pendulum swinging between two uncertainties. One. Jean died on Meridian. Two. Jean _almost_ died on Meridian. To him, they fuse. Jean _died_ on Meridian, one-the life fueling his beating heart is snipped before Reyes’ eyes-two. Jean _almost_ and he cares for a living ghost, a shell of before. A shell he attempts to mend after.

_You’ve done enough, he’s happy._ The part not screaming obscenities tells him, and Reyes wants to believe he has.

He brings their lips together then. Jean straddles his hips, pushing him down as he has this morning. He’s alive, and real, and warm, and he can engulf him in flames there so Reyes forgets uncertainties, of _almost_.

They break, catching their breaths. Jean’s lips are as red as the blush shading his tawny cheeks. His half-lidded eyes mirror Reyes’ own, dark and wanting.

He takes his lips again, more tongue and teeth this time. He has a vice grip on Jean’s hip as though he’ll disintegrate if he lets go. They shift; Reyes lies on the sofa while Jean straddles his hips, trailing fingers from his chest to his stomach to further-making him feel feel feel-

They melt.

 

Jean is different when he sleeps. Anyone is yet Jean presents an otherworldly figure while sleeping. No faded lines etch his skin. Black strands splay like a halo around his head. Peaceful. Ethereal.

Reyes sits at the edge of the bed in full armour. Tiberius wants him at the rendezvous point at dawn. He has this moment, one of a hundred stolen moments of a universe enclosing Jean and him. If he can have this, lock in his heart for only him to keep, Reyes will.

He kisses his forehead. Let’s his lips linger on Jean’s skin and whispers, “I’ll see you tonight.” 

And leaves.


	2. jupiter

Dawn in the Badlands reveals a hidden beauty within Kadara’s harsh landscape. Govorkam shades the clouds soft pink; early rays from the sun peek through the mountains’ crevices. Hundreds of miles below, Kadara’s fauna wakes with its planet. During these times, Reyes remembers he dreams, of opening his shuttle, feeling for the clouds.

In another time and another place, a voice as calm as a wavering breeze describes mountains like the jagged rocks he passes by. She paints the everlasting beauty of her mountains with her words, full of pride and scorn at once.

And Reyes wonders if he’ll ever see her mountains or it’s just another fevered dream promised to a child who wished for more.

Maybe, dawn in the Badlands isn’t so beautiful anymore.

Outside of the rendezvous point are Crux and Ferreira. Reyes lands his shuttle by the Collective’s personal and more sophisticated Kodiak. No sign of Tiberius.

“Boss!” Ferreira waves at him.

Aoba Kamiyama Ferreira-twenty years old and the Collective’s youngest agent. He’s eager, earns fast, somewhat a good shot and speaks seven languages (working on his eighth-Shelesh), he boasts. Ferreira hasn’t proved, nor Reyes has found use, but having a polyglot can be an asset.

And Ferreira knows. High from Oblivion and with Reyes’ boot on his Adam’s apple for stealing his credit chit, Ferreira deduces. For all intents and purposes, Reyes should have killed him, instead he offers him a place in the Collective.

He’s smart. If he can keep his mouth shut about the Charlatan, he’s useful.

“Boss! Boss! Crux has been telling me about the mission. RemTech? I’ve only heard rumours about it from the miners who come to Tartarus. Sounds powerful, yes? Would we have it, would we?” Ferreira blathers.

If he can keep his mouth shut.

“Settle down,” Reyes laughs. “Our contact should be here-” He checks the time on his Omni tool. “Soon.”

“Great! I promise you I won’t disappoint. I’m a seasoned thief in both Earth and Andromeda-”

Ferreira blathers on, and Reyes loses track of his conversation. Crux looks at him. A smile tugs at the corner of her lips. When Reyes gives her a pointed look, she shakes her head and laughs.

By the time Tiberius arrives, it’s late in the morning. Crux and Ferreira have returned to shuttle to wait.

“Vidal! You’re a man I haven’t seen around.” Tiberius shakes his hand.

“Kelainos Tiberius, you said _dawn_.” Despite the pleasantries, Reyes grips his talons firmer than necessary. The slight twitch in his smile dents the jovial mask he wears.

“Uhh yeah…I had to take care of some things uh...back at the port.”

“You know I’m not a patient man.”

“I know you aren’t, Vidal.” He gives a shaky chuckle. “But I’m here and you have some RemTech to extract. You talked to the Charlatan about me?”

“Of course, I did,” Reyes says, “I always fulfill my promises.”

“See, that’s why you’re the best smuggler in this port, Vidal!”

For a turian, Tiberius lacks the military discipline to keep his shuttle tidy. Empty bottles, cracked datapads and other junk litter every corner of shuttle.

Tiberius clears out a crate’s surface. “Seat?”

“I’ll stand,” Reyes says, wrinkling his nose.

Tiberius shrugs, and pulls a dusty cushion from his pile of junk. He sits, flashing a map of the Badlands with his Omni tool. Under the dim light of Tiberius’ shuttle, the holo is clearer.

“There’s your cache.” He points at the red dot blinking at Spirit’s Ledge.

“Looks easy.”

“Easy? On Kadara?” Tiberius laughs. “Either you’ve been out of the business for too long or you think you’re the best there is.”

“Can’t I be both?”

“Then you’re just stupid,” he says, “but you’re not, Vidal. You’re the smartest asshole on this planet, and you need to be smart to get this one.”

He clicks a command on his Omni tool. The map zooms in at the red dot. On the screen is a building surrounded by rock. Reyes spots a vantage point where his shuttle can land.

“The cache is in a warehouse owned by raiders. They stole it from a science team on Elaaden and brought it here to Kadara,” Tiberius explains.

“And you don’t think the Initiative wants it back?” Reyes asks. A cache filled with Remnant Tech on Kadara, stolen from an Initiative science team with no search warrant from Nexus? Seems too convenient.

“If the Initiative wants it back, their pet pathfinder will be sniffing for it by now,” he says. “Been on this planet for weeks.”

Reyes needs to know one thing. “If it has been on Kadara for weeks, then why give me this job now?”

He shrugs, flashing a smile which tells Reyes all he needs to know. “My contacts found about the cache on the day I sent you the email.”

Landing on a cliff overlooking the warehouse, Reyes surveys the area. The warehouse is a large building with a catwalk encircling the structure and surrounded by mountains. From his vantage, he sees no entrances aside from the large double doors at front. A comm tower is at the left of the warehouse.

And raiders everywhere, on the catwalk, by the double doors and around the comm tower.

“Crux, I need a visual on the snipers,” he says.

Lying on her stomach, Crux peers through her sniper rifle. Her movements are precise, invisible to the naked eye. Reyes hardly notices when she turns to examine an area.

“I counted four of them,” she peeks from her rifle. She looks at it again. “No, five. There’s a sniper behind the comm tower. In a cavern.”

“See if there are other entrances.”

Reyes returns to his shuttle. Ferreira sits on a crate, swinging his legs and a pistol on his lap. He moves past him and to the cockpit where he finds his pack. One by one, he takes out what he needs-smoke bombs, extra thermal clips, a wiring tool--and a dusty holograph.

Using his sleeve, Reyes wipes the dust. The holograph flickers on, and he sees and image of himself-no, not him, another person from a different time, different galaxy with Reyes’ golden eyes, dark hair and charming smile but nothing else. Maybe, younger than Reyes or older in this holo, wearing Alliance colours with pride-the perfect image of a hero.

He traces the Star of Terra on the holo. _How did this get in here?_

“What’s the plan?” Ferreira asks. Reyes shoves the holograph in his pack where it belongs, buried like the memories he left behind 600 years ago.

He gives Ferreira a wiring tool, and leads him out of the shuttle. Smiling, he says, “For now, follow me.”

Reyes stands at the edge of the cliff. Tall grass sit at the bottom of the cliff with raiders patrolling the area. The plan should be easy to execute-get in, disable security through the comm tower without raiders noticing, get map, find cache, kill all raiders, get cache. Ferreira comes with him, and Crux stays behind with her sniper rifle.

He turns to Crux. “Wait for my signal before you take out the snipers.”

Then he climbs down, one foot at a time. Suddenly, he smells ozone in the air. A sound erupts from above, and Ferreira falls. His jump jets are activated.

“Ferreira!” Reyes slides down, following Ferreira to the tall grass. He catches him before they land and roll on the ground.

Reyes remains still, controlling his breathing and observing the movements of the patrol. He covers Ferreira’s mouth who has been hyperventilating since they got down. Reyes will scold him later after they get the shipment.

A raider steps in their area. Reyes grabs a knife. When the patrol comes close, Reyes locks his arms around his neck and stabs him in the chest. The raider falls limp. Reyes lets go and the raider slides on the ground.

They creep through the grass, narrowly avoiding the patrolling guards. He sees a sniper on a catwalk. She peeks at her rifle. 

He glimpses at the cliff. Crux is still there.

When the sniper sees them, Reyes raises his hand and crosses his index and middle finger--a signal to Crux. A silent shot hits the sniper. She falls down the catwalk.

As they continue through the tall grass, Crux snipes from afar and on the ground, Reyes takes down any patrol who gets too close. Finally, they reach the comm tower.

Reyes observes. Three raiders roam the area-one on the catwalk and two on the ground.

And the sniper in the cavern.

The raiders below are easy to take down. With the sniper, Reyes can’t execute his plan. The guard on the catwalk has the perfect vantage point of the scene below her and so does the sniper.

He does have the smoke bombs.

“Ferreira, can you do something for me?” The moment Reyes asks the question, his eyes lit up.

He hands him the smoke bombs. “See the guard on the catwalk? Blind her with this, then take her down.”

“Yes, Boss!” Ferreira nods. Reyes swears he almost leaps for joy.

“Wait for my signal. And no theatrics, please.”

Ferreira sneaks off.

He pages Crux. “You, too, wait for my signal.”

“ _Yes_.”

Reyes watches. He maps the pattern of steps the patrols take as though judging them for death.

He waits; glances at Ferreira hiding behind a pillar; imagines Crux waiting for his signal.

One guard comes close-

A breath. A hand up, index and middle finger crossed. Time seems to slow.

A shot cuts through the air and hits the sniper on her head before she reacts. Smoke covers the catwalk to his right; a shadow collapses on the floor. When the smoke clears, the guard’s throat is slit. Dead. Ferreira stands victorious.

And he knocks the guard on the ground, stabbing him on his chest.

A breath. Time resumes. A raider-the last alive-sees the carnage in front of him. He opens his Omni tool. Reyes takes his Sidewinner. He aims. A shot-not his-lands on the raider’s head. Crux.

He pages her. “I didn’t give a signal.”

“ _I thought the raider opening his Omni tool was enough_ ,” she says, stifling her laughter.

Reyes frowns. “Just get over here.”

He checks the perimeter for anymore patrols. None, for now. Reyes walks to the black box by the door of the comm tower, and takes out his wiring tool. Opening the black box, he connects the tool with a series of ports. This should give him access to all security in the building-including the control room.

He opens his Omni and links it with the wiring tool. A map of the warehouse appears. Reyes taps on a square marked “Central Control.”

_Access Denied. Need Director’s permission. Code: “0152126413”_

_Fuck_ . He calls Ferreira, “ _Ferreira, you can get in the entrance?_ ”

 _“I am a thief after all and I’ve been through many passageways both in Sao Paulo and-_ ”

“Ferreira,” Reyes lets out an exasperated sigh. “Can you get in or not?”

“ _I can!_ ” He says exuberantly. 

“I’m sending the warehouse map to your Omni tool,” Reyes says, “find central control and disable all security. Use the wiring tool I gave you.”

“ _Understood_.”

Behind him, he hears jump jets. Crux walks to his side.

”Are you sure about this?” She asks.

“Of course, our plan always succeeds," he says. It's a perfect plan as long as Ferreira does what he's told. 

“No," she shakes her head. “Ferreira. Are you sure about him?”

“He has potential," Reyes points out.

They hide behind a structure near the entrance. Waiting for Ferreira to finish hacking in the security, Reyes takes his assault rifle out and orders Crux to do the same. 

When Ferreira takes longer than usual, Reyes pages him. 

“ _Boss?”_  His voice is drowned by chatter from the background.

“What is it?”

_“Umm...I might have done something.”_

“Something?” Reyes elongates the last syllable. Crux knits her eyebrows.

 _“Something-_ ” The sound of bullet fire drowns him out. _“I accidentally set off-_ ” More bullets.

A grenade explodes in the background.

“Ferreira! Ferreira!” He panics. “What did you do?”

 _“Look-”_ Static. Bullets. “ _Boss, all the raiders-the ones not firing at me-are coming for you-_ ” A series of shots are fired-Ferreira’s. Static. “ _-and a_ _Hydra.”_

“What?”

The warehouse door opens. Raiders come out, weapons ready and several climb on the catwalks. The ground shakes; a missile is launched at their hiding place. Reyes rolls away in time.

“How do we take care of that?” Crux yells between gunshots and missile fire.

From cover, Reyes fires at a raider on the catwalk. “There’s a rocket launcher in the shuttle-” He ducks when the Hydra sprays machine gun fire at them.

“Shuttle’s too far from here-”

“I know. Just take care of everyone first then we’ll deal with the mech.”

Crux moves back to create a vantage point between her and the raiders on the catwalk. Soon, it’s just them and the Hydra. Reyes moves, cover to cover, narrowly missing every missile lodged at him.  Adrenaline pumps through his veins; it keeps him moving yet it also wears him down.

 _“Boss. Boss, I figured it out!_ ” Comes Ferreira in his ear.

“I’m a little busy!” He gasps, exhaustion giving in.

 _“I know but I figured out something that might help. Look I’ll just show you._ ”

And as soon as Ferreira cuts off, Reyes smells smoke from the Hydra. The mech glows red like a dying star and it explodes. He ducks, shielding himself from flying debris.

 _“See, it helped!_ ”

“Ferreira,” Reyes pants, holding his knees. “Just come over here.”

They locate two crates by the entrance. Opening the crates, they see RemTech, lots of it. Perhaps, most of the RemTech the Initiative has extracted.

This is the shipment.

Reyes has struck gold.

While Crux gets the shuttle, Reyes sits down. Leaning on a crate, he shuts his eyes and breathes, exhaling the ache in his bones. Today has been a long day. All he wants is a drink and a nap.

He opens his eyes. Ferreira stands in front of him.

“Soo…” Ferreira swings on his heels. “How did I do?”

He considers him. Ferreira almost killed them twice for his recklessness. Reyes should be angry.

 _He has potential_ , Reyes hears himself say. Ferreira is smart and he can learn. The Collective needs smart people like him.

And to shut him up because he _knows_.

“Terribly. You almost killed us,” he says.

Ferreira frowns. His shoulders sink.

“But you did save us.” The smile Reyes gives is genuine, truly.

That changes his mood. Reyes swears he saw starlight in his dark eyes when he smiles.

 

The shuttle lands on the open clearing by the warehouse. Carrying the crates is difficult when his entire body is screaming at him out of exhaustion. He slumps on the back of the pilot seat when they’re done.

“Uh I found this on a crate,” Ferreira says as they prepare for takeoff. On his hand is a vid card, small enough to fit his pocket.

“Plug it in your Omni tool and let’s see,” Reyes says.

Ferreira does as instructed. From his Omni tool, a holo vid flashes. The dim light of the shuttle deepens the outlines of the vid, showing someone familiar.

Tiberius.

 _“Good, you got the RemTech,”_ he speaks to someone not in the vid. Perhaps, one of the raiders they have killed. _“Bring it to Kadara and I’ll take care of it.”_

The holovid flashes off.

“We’ve been set up!” Ferreira clenches his fists.

“I figured,” Reyes says. Tiberius knows too much about the operation to not be involved. The more pressing matter is, what does the turian want from him?

“Then let’s take the cache!”

“No,” Crux interrupts. “Tiberius will know it’s us. It’s too dangerous.”

“Crux is right,” Reyes says.

Ferreira throws his arms in the air. “So we’re letting him get away, then? Is that it?”

“We’re not. Tiberius is a powerful man. He has mercenaries from Kadara to Elaaden doing his dirty work for him. We need to be careful.”

Ferreira argues, “the Collective is the same. I know you have agents operation in Eos too.” The sound of his fist slamming against his palm echoes in the shuttle. “We can take him down right now.”

“Our agents aren’t used for petty vengeance,” Crux hisses.

"We've been betrayed. Let's take him down!"

“Ferreira, enough!” Reyes says firmly. "We're not going after Tiberius and that's final."

Ferreira's lips draw to a thin line. He doesn't speak when they leave the warehouse, nor does he speak as they're flying through Kadaran skies or when they unload the crates at Tiberius' rendezvous point.Maybe, he's filled too much of his head with empty promises about the Collective's grandeur. They’ve been lucky, mostly as the only organized group on Kadara aside from the Outcast. When Reyes kills Sloane Kelly, the Outcast dies with her.

And all Kadara has is the Collective.

 

As they fly back to Kadara Port, Ferreira taps Reyes’ shoulder.

“I apologize,” he says, “I spoke out of turn and I shouldn’t have done that.”

Reyes smiles. It’s genuine.

“Apology accepted.”


	3. noli me tangere

Jean isn’t at home.

Three things come into mind once Reyes steps in their apartment.

One. Jean Ryder is gallivanting in Kadara Port without him. Later at night, Reyes will pick him up, drunk or horny or both at either one of Kadara’s two establishments. Except, Jean does not galavant, not since Meridian.

Two. He left, packed his bags, caught the next shuttle taking him off-planet and ran back to his sister who offers adventure. Something Jean desperately wants; something Reyes cannot give.

 

Though, Gabriela should have messaged him by now, if Jean has run back to the Tempest; an email where she tries to be the overprotective sister Jean never had, scolding him for hurting her brother.

Three. His enemies. They have taken Jean and tomorrow, they’ll give Reyes a ransom.

Or Jean is simply bored being cooped up inside this apartment all day long, and he went out for a walk, and he’ll be back soon.

The clock says 22:30. Jean should’ve been back at this hour.

Maybe, he has gone to Ditaeon and is caught up in a conversation with one of the engineers, he loses track of the time. Maybe, Jean hasn’t ran away and he’ll be back. He should be back.

 

Reyes waits, collapsing on a chair in the living room. The whiskey in his hand distracts him from the minutes ticking by.

At 22:45, Reyes opens his terminal to ping his contacts about Jean’s whereabouts. He sees a message from an unknown sender. No subject.

He opens it and a single line sinks his heart.

To: Reyes Vidal

From: [ENCRYPTED]

Waiting for someone? Come to the Draullir base to find out.

Another message follows, from an Evangeline de Crosse?

Crux. One of her code names.

 

To: Reyes Vidal

From: Evangeline de Crosse

We have problems with our comm systems and it looks like it’s affecting the rest of the framework.

L can explain it better.

-C

\--

The Draullir base is shrouded in darkness. Despite using his Omni-tool’s flashlight, Reyes can only make out silhouettes. A bright light illuminates a section of the base where the Collective, his inner circle and Ferreira huddle around a lamp. Lisera sees him first; she waves him over. She sits farthest away from the group at her terminal.

“There’s an anomaly in our main processor. Haven’t figured out what it is or where it came from since our scans keep missing it,” Lisera says. Her tattoos deepen under the dim light, creating lines on her ethereal blue face. “Been trying every fix I know-killing specific processes, force reset...Whatever it is killed the rest of our systems, that’s why the power’s out.”

“Come again?” Reyes misses most of what she says. He doesn’t speak tech, never tried to. The most he can do is fix the engine in his Kodiak, and work his Omni tool and his terminal, of course.

“The power’s out and our systems are fucked.”

The terminals in the base turn static. Lisera-brows furrowed and sweat perspiring between the creases-hastily enters command after command on her terminal. The rest of the Collective are in a state of silent frenzy. Even Crux-calm and composed while getting fired at by heavy artillery-shows cracks in her stoic expression.

“Charlatan,” comes a deep rumble from his Omni tool.

A flash-blinding in the sea of darkness, then a figure appears on his Omni tool and the terminals. Their face is shadowed by a pale porcelain mask shaped like a feline. Red lines form whiskers on their cheeks, and curve around their eyelids. In another time, when Jean isn’t missing and the Draullir base isn’t in covered in darkness, Reyes finds it ridiculous. Now, he’s terrified.

“How do you know? Who are you?” He demands, gritting his teeth to stop his voice from wavering.

“I am no one,” the figure says. The temperature in the base seems to drop as Reyes feels a cold chill run down his spine. “But answer my riddle and I’ll give you a name.”

Riddles. He has no patience to play anyone’s games. He gives Lisera a look; a silent order she knows well. She switches to a different program in her Omni tool, one which tracks the location of a vid call, and hooks it to her terminal.

A minute and he’ll feel that familiar thrill in his chest. People have tried. Since the Charlatan’s victory over Sloane, they think they can outsmart him. No one has succeeded, no one will. His empire is built to last.

“I riddled a prince, abandoned in the wilds as a babe by his father who tried to fight fate. I reside by the Tomb of Kings once coloured white but is now reduced to sand. My face was disfigured by an emperor brought down by a fierce general of winter. Who am I?”

Reyes grins. The next he hears from the figure will be at their base, on their knees, pleading for the Charlatan’s mercy.

When he looks at Lisera, her lips are drawn to a grim line. Reyes arches an eyebrow. She shakes her head and shows her terminal to him. Bold letters fill the screen, can’t be tracked. _How?_

“Something the matter, Charlatan?”

Reyes stays silent.

“The sphinx,” Ferreira answers with a confidence Reyes hasn’t seen from him before. “The answer to your question is the sphinx. The prince is Oedipus, and…And Tomb of the Kings, The Pyramids of Giza! The emperor-”

“Bravo!” The figure claps. “You may call me the Sphinx.”

A man wearing a sack on his head appears on his Omni-tool. The sack’s ends are tucked inside a collar. Muffled sounds come from the sack which has Reyes clenching his fist, fingernails digging deep in his palms to leave a mark.

“Charlatan, I think you know who this is,” the Sphinx says with sardonic glee.

“Jean.” His name escapes from his lips like an exhale, like he has been holding his breath from the moment he left their apartment.

“Jean!” he says again, louder, like this isn’t happening, like none of this is real and Jean isn’t on the screen with a sack on his head, taken by a masked figure called the Sphinx. He ignores Ferreira’s arched eyebrow, wondering who _Jean_ must be. Later, he’ll explain Jean Ryder is the most important man in the whole galaxy or two, even if they lived separate yet parallel lives in the last one and they could never meet.

Jean Ryder is important.

Reyes wants to believe it too.

“You want him back.”

Yes, yes, he does. More than anything this damn galaxy has given him. _Give him back._ He almost demands but the words fail to leave his lips.

“I want to play a game.” The Sphinx speaks with a cadence of a child. “Solve all my riddles, find three caches hidden across Kadara and you’ll figure out where I kept the boy.”

A shift in pitch-the deep rumble Reyes has grown accustomed to since the Sphinx invaded their screens. Their tone, however, is more sinister. The Sphinx says, “I only have one rule. Obey or else-” They brandishes a remote with a single red button. “The boy has a collar. The collar has a bomb. The bomb goes off if I press this button, and I shouldn’t explain what happens to the boy. I’m sure you’ve seen your fair share of explosions.”

The Sphinx returns to the screen. “What’s the matter, Charlatan? Cat got your tongue?”

For that line alone, Reyes needs to kill this Sphinx. He breathes, licks his lips, swallows hard and finds the composure he needs to rearrange his fractured pieces.

“How do we-” He catches his breath. “How do I know it’s real?”

“I could show you right now.”

Their thumb hovers over the red button. They press, and Reyes’ heart stops.

“Wait! Stop!” He lurches forward, reaching as though he can snatch the remote from their hands.  “I’ll play your goddamn game.”

The Sphinx releases the button. The screen flashes to Jean on the same chair, with the same sack and his head intact.

“Excellent! You have four hours. Solve my riddle or else,” the Sphinx says. Behind the porcelain mask, Reyes sees them grinning, mocking him for relinquishing control.

The transmission cuts off. All the lights in the Draullir base turn on. A symphonious whirl comes from their systems, signaling their return to life. Reyes collapses on a nearby crate, gasping short, quick breaths as if his heart has stopped and restarted with the systems.

“Boss,” Crux places a hand on his shoulder. “We have four hours.”

“Right.”

His Omni tool beeps-a new message from the Sphinx.

To: Reyes Vidal

From: [ENCRYPTED]

Charlatan,

First riddle.

-S

Attached to the email is a file called _miners.wav_. He plays the file. Reyes covers his ears. A high-pitched shrill, perhaps loud enough pierce one’s ear drums, erupt from his Omni tool.

“That’s no riddle!” Ferreira says.

“It’s probably hidden in the audio,” Reyes says. “We have to get it out. Lisera?”

She shrugs, keeping her gaze on her terminal. “Not my line of field. Besides, we can’t do much until all of our systems have rebooted.”

“If I may,” Crux coughs. “The audio file needs demodulation. To get the message, I mean.”

“Demodulation?”

“It’s the process of extracting the message signal from its carrier wave,” she says like it’s common knowledge. Reyes arches an eyebrow and she adds, “In non-scientific terms, we get the message from the audio file.”

She gets her terminal. “All Initiative issued terminals should have a program which can extract message signals from any file. My terminal should still have it.”

Lisera turns to Crux. “Except you can’t do anything while our systems are still rebooting.”

“How much do we have left before the systems are done rebooting?” Reyes asks.

“Shouldn’t take too long,” she says. “Wait- “A series of numbers which make no sense to Reyes print on her screen. Lisera enters some commands on the interface. She flashes a smile. “It’s done.”

Relief floods his veins. He’s a step closer to the Sphinx and to saving Jean.

“Demodulation. How long should that take?” He asks, standing behind her terminal.

“Depends. Might take awhile if the file is layered with a lot of noise.”

The Sphinx will, of course, anything to challenge him, prevent him from finding out. Because under different circumstances, Reyes will too.

And the Sphinx appears on his Omni tool as if summoned.

“An hour as passed.”

And the transmission ends.

An hour? Has it been that long?

Reyes dares not count the minutes. They tick by, surely even if he doesn’t look at the clock. Maybe, three hours have passed, and Jean’s brains are splattered on the wall of some hidden room he never finds. Or only a few minutes have passed, and they’re still racing against time. Aquila and Ferreira have a conversation behind him. Reyes misses most of it, aside from Aquila’s gruff “he’s just special to the Boss.”

Oh, so they’re talking about Jean.

Their relationship isn’t private among his inner circle.

“It’s done,” Crux says.

They gather around her terminal. She clicks play. Static comes; Reyes furrows his brows at Crux for not extracting the message completely. Crux shrugs, and when she opens her program, a voice as familiar as one belonging to a friend, comes from the file.

“I tell you a tale, in the late 20th century, taking place in a cavern of a southern cordillera, claimed once by an empire which also claimed the pearl of the orient seas.” the Sphinx' narration is ominous without their mask. “A group of miners explore the underground tunnels dug deep by their forefathers until they see an altar. They performed a ritual. A god emerges and tells them _memento mori_. Who is this god?”

Cordillera.

Cordillera.

In another time, maybe six hundred years ago and when he dreams, cordilleras fill a child’s curious mind. Folk tales, anecdotes from a lifetime once lost and songs paint a blank canvas. They fill the empty spaces of their home; enormous for the two people residing in it. Promises, she always makes promises, enough to keep a child from wandering.

At the end, she never wanted to go back.

But he never asked.

“…but pearl of the orient seas? What does that mean?” Ferreira says, pulling him back to the present. He, Crux and Aquila discuss the riddle by a makeshift table

“The Sphinx asks for a god,” Crux points out.

“Yes, yes, I know but to find out which pantheon this god belongs to, we need to examine every clue in this riddle.”

“Boss, you’ve been quiet,” Aquila says.

He rubs his temples, burying faded memories in the recess of his mind. He left them, millions of light years away where they belong, in another time, another place, a different version of him. They should stay there.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he says, putting on a smile.

Aquila’s not convinced. He opens his mouth to say something, closes it and doesn’t press further. Instead, he says, “Ferreira wants to examine the clues in the riddle.”

“We don’t have the time.”

“If I just get access to the Nexus libraries,” Ferreira insists, “I can narrow it down to a couple of-”

Reyes cuts him off with a gaze as cold as Voeld’s hash winters. “We. Don’t. Have. The. Time.”

He murmurs. “Cordillera in the riddle is the Andes. See if that narrows it down.”

Ferreira doesn’t meet his gaze. Deep in thought, he curves a finger over his chin. After a pregnant pause, he says, “So from pre-colonization. My father had this book in his library-”

Reyes glares at him.

“I was just thinking,” he snaps his fingers. Stars twinkle in his deep black eyes. “These miners summoned a god which tells them _memento mori_ -remember death.”

“So?”

“It’s Latin.”

“Ferreira, just get to the point."

“What I mean is,” he sighs, stands up and paces round the room. “Yes, I do agree the cordillera in the riddle is the Andes but why say a Latin phrase, instead of a phrase from an indigenous language of the Andes?”

“Maybe, it’s a decoy,” Aquila says, “to trick us.”

Ferreira stops. “Maybe.”

“So if it’s a decoy, then the important clue is-” Reyes considers what they have deduced. The answer has been clear since the beginning.

“Memento mori!”

He gives Ferreira a knowing smile. “Remember _death_.”

“Death, Boss. Death! The god in the riddle is Supay, the Inca god of death!”

Ferreira snaps his fingers and bounces on his heels. They charm him, if only because of his gestures, of the bronze glow dusting his cheeks and the way his eyes twinkle like stars on the remind him of Jean. Yet Jean’s eyes are akin to universes, his skin glows burnished gold and his gestures are relaxed, unless he comes to a solution.

Then, he becomes a different person. One who blathers on and on and on about tech and Reyes never questions or tries to understand (he never could). Only listens until his heart is splitting at the seams, overflowing with something dangerous.

And that _something_ has left an open wound, raw and aching.

He just wants him back.

“Ferreira, how sure are you it’s...Supay?” Reyes asks.

“Supay is the Inca god of death. _Memento mori_ stands for _Remember death_ ,” he explains. “And miners, Supay is associated with miner’s rituals.”

It’s reasonable, he thinks.

“I have your answer.” He calls the Sphinx.

Silence. His blood turns cold, is he too late? He tries again. “Sphinx, I have your answer. The god is Supay.”

The silence is deafening. _He’s not late. He can’t be_.

Or Ferreira’s answer is wrong and in his acquiescence, Jean is dead.

A map of Kadara appears on his Omni tool. On the map, a red dot flashes over a mountain in the Badlands. The area looks familiar, like he has spent months looking over that specific location on the map.

Because he has.

This is the cave where Sloane Kelly died.


	4. memento mori

 

“I miss flying.”

Aquila leans back on his chair. The waking sun softens the lines on his face, peeling away the layers of age. 

“We can switch if you like,” Reyes says. 

“Nah. You were always the better pilot, got it from your old man.”

Reyes freezes. 

He doesn't let Aquila fly. 

 

Ghosts linger inside the cave.

An apparition of him leaps from the shadows and proposes a duel to win Kadara’s throne. Sloane Kelly accepts. She has a warrior’s heart-courageous, bold. All admirable qualities, it’s a shame hubris is her downfall.

Reyes blinks. They’re gone. He stands alone on the precipice. Aquila points his rifle at the entrance. No one will come, anyone who can is long dead. Reyes has a message from the Sphinx, one he receives before leaving the base. He brings it up. The cave’s dim light accentuates every word on his Omni tool.

 

 

> To: Reyes Vidal
> 
> From: [ENCRYPTED]
> 
>  
> 
> Consider this a reward.
> 
> Memento Mori.
> 
> -S

 

 _Memento mori_. Remember death. Is that why the Sphinx brought him here? A place where his empire is baptized with blood? To relieve him of any sins worth relieving, if there are any. He has no regrets about killing Sloane. She deserves it and Kadara is better without her.

And this ‘reward.’ If the Sphinx means the cache, he finds nothing but ghosts. Maybe, it’s another puzzle of this foolish game and Reyes is more foolish for playing along.

 _You’re doing this for Jean_. He thinks. It prevents him from breaking apart.

“Charlatan! I’ve come to bargain!” Tiberius strides in as confident as a peacock. Without his armour, he has the form of the businessman instead of the smuggler he tries to be. “I know where your boyfriend is.”

Tiberius and the Sphinx, working together? Reyes recalls his meeting with Tiberius; of the lateness of his arrival; of the edge in his voice when Reyes tells him to meet at dawn.

Shit, he should have known.

“Nothing, huh?” Tiberius taunts.  Aquila aims for his head “I know this is how you killed Sloane Kelly, lured her into a trapped then bang! But I know you won’t kill me-” He laughs. “-because I have what you want.”

Reyes’ control is at an edge. He clenches his fists, restraining himself from leaping out of the shadows and killing Tiberius.

 _You’re doing this for Jean._ He orders Aquila to lower his rifle.

“When my client ordered me to get the boy, I didn’t expect it to be that Ryder kid. Not the Pathfinder, no, that brother of hers who’s always at her heels. Didn’t expect it was him you were sleeping with.  But wait-” He pauses, grinning like he has won the world. “I saw him with Reyes Vidal at Sloane’s party. They were really close if you ask me. Either he’s two timing you with your top lieutenant or you’re Reyes Vidal.”

Reyes leaps from the shadows then. Tiberius whips around, arms up as if defeated; he lacks a holster or a pouch or anything suggesting he carries a weapon.

So he comes to a confrontation unarmed. He’s an idiot but Reyes has dealt with smugglers and businessmen like Tiberius. They pretend, change faces as though they change clothes. Everyone on Kadara hides something like a damn charlatan. Those who don’t are either dead or off-world.

“Vidal.”

“Where’s Jean?”

He chuckles. “You know I’m surprised it was you, I truly am. I thought the Charlatan was better than some low life smuggler.”

Any other time, Reyes might have humoured him. This isn’t an ordinary time; he pulls his pistol out. “I’ll ask one more time Tiberius, where is Jean?”

“Spirits, Vidal! We’re both businessmen here! No need to point a gun at my face.” Tiberius lowers his arms. He has that grin which tells him all he needs to know.  

If Tiberius wants him to be a businessman, he’ll be one. Reyes drops his Sidewinner and kicks it to the side.

“Alright, Tiberius,” he opens his arms, flashing him a smile that’s all teeth. “What’s the deal?”

“Deal?”

“Yeah, deal. We’re both businessmen here. You want something from me and I want Jean Ryder’s location.”

“Right, deal,” Tiberius coughs, collecting himself before speaking. “I want the Collective’s full protection on my shipments. You still get 40-60 of the profits as we have agreed before.”

“You have it,” Reyes promises without skipping a beat.

“That’s it?”

“Yes, my friend.”

“Well, here’s my end of the bargain,” he opens his Omni tool and sends him the coordinates. “Where my client keeps your boyfriend.”

Reyes checks his Omni tool. The coordinates lead him to a warehouse in Spirit’s Ledge, the same warehouse as where they extracted the RemTech shipment.

“One more thing Tiberius, do you know anything about this client of yours?” Reyes asks.

“Not a damn clue.”

Tiberius turns to leave. A shot cuts through the air and hits him at the back of his head. He collapses forward; Kelainos Tiberius is dead. Reyes lowers his hand. His index and middle finger are crossed. Two of his enemies are assassinated in this cave by his orders. _Memento mori_. Remember death. The Sphinx’s message is clear now.

“Oh Tiberius, you should have asked for your life.” He searches the turian’s body. Finding nothing, he takes his Omni tool instead and hopes it’ll give him something about the Sphinx.

Aquila hops from his hiding spot. He asks, “what do we do with his body?”

“A proper burial. However, turians do it,” Reyes says. Tiberius maybe a shrewd businessman but he at least deserves peace in the afterlife, if there is one for people like Tiberius and him.

While Aquila takes care of Tiberius, he receives a call from the Sphinx.

“Hello, Charlatan.”

“Just the man I was looking for,” Reyes says ironically.

There is silence on the other end. By now, he has grown accustomed to the long pauses between them.

The Sphinx speaks, “I assume you’ve dealt with your opponent?”

“If by opponent you mean Tiberius, then yes, I killed him.”

Another pause. ”Why?”

“Because he kidnapped Jean and is working with you,” he says indignantly. “Because he knew who I was and I can’t let him leave this cave alive.”

“Others have known and you spared them.”

He thinks of the Pathfinder and her crew, of Kian and Nakamoto, of Ferriera who deduced it by simply connecting the facts and Reyes rewards him by hiring him. He thinks of Jean, and despite hating who he is back then, chose to hide it from the Initiative. Then the others, those he killed for simply knowing. He has played judge, jury and executioner for all of them; weighted their hearts like the Egyptian god his call sign is named after.

Why spare the Pathfinder and not Tiberius? Why hire Ferreira but not the other nameless thief who figured it out?

“Just tell me where the cache is,” Reyes says.

“There should be an indent on the wall which hides the cache.”

He runs his fingers along the grooves of the cave; they are rough on his palms. He finds the indent, a crack on the wall. Slipping his hand inside, he feels for the cache. Reyes doesn’t know what it feels or looks like, or if he can take it out of the indent. He feels it, four corners belonging to a quadrangle of sorts. He takes it out.

The cache is a box, weighing nothing. He shakes it and hears the rattling of an object. He opens. Inside the box is a data pad.

Reyes takes it out and taps the interface to turn it on. The data pad shows:

 

 

> _LADY SERKET HOSTS A DINNER PARTY_
> 
> _Lady Serket the Scorpion queen hosts a dinner party. First, she invites the Ox who brings who brings her a branch from an Oak tree. Following him is the lion, Simha._

 

It’s another riddle, the first of three. Reyes stuffs it in his pack, he’ll figure it out later. For now, he has to go back. Find out who the Sphinx is and get a foothold.

As he and Aquila prepare to leave the cave, he gets an email.

 

To: Reyes Vidal

From: [ENCRYPTED]

 

Only I know where the boy is.

-S

 

Oh. Reyes knows, figured it out when Tiberius gives him the location. A warehouse in Kadara, the same warehouse of the RemTech shipment, he wouldn’t have used the same location twice.

\--

Reyes gives Aquila the data pad and Tiberius’ Omni tool to bring back to the Draullir base. Maybe, they can find something about the Sphinx, anything.

He returns to his apartment. It’s empty as if he expects anything to change in a day. His apartment hasn’t change. Jean is still gone.

Reyes turns down the thermostat. Their room is colder without him, larger in the empty spaces. He searches the side table and finds a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. They once belong to Jean before Meridian.

“You used to go through half a pack before day ends,” he says to the open air, half-hoping to hear laughter and when he looks, he finds Jean standing at the doorway.

He pulls a cigarette from the pack. Unlike Jean, he rarely indulges, and often under a post-coital haze when he’d pluck it from Jean’s lips. They’d share it like everything just minutes before and they’d kiss. Reyes savours the intoxicating mix of sex and smoke on his lips, incapable of ridding it.

Months later, it lingers.

He lights the cigarette and coughs. It tastes as putrid as the stench of sulphur he endured for two years. How Jean stands them is beyond him. They don’t taste terrible when he shares them with Jean. Or they’re always bad and Jean has a way of making them better. Nevertheless, Reyes inhales. They’re one of the few cigarettes that traveled between two galaxies; he needs this.

He searches his inbox for the vid calls he has of Jean and him, when they didn’t live together.  

First vid call, an undetermined time during the search for Meridian.

The Jean from the video stupefies him.

_“Hi! I know it’s only been a few days since we last saw each other but I miss you. I can’t believe I’m saying this and to you of all people!”_

The Jean on the vid is from another time. No white streak cuts through his hair like a blade; black bangs frame his perfect face. Starlight twinkles in his eyes, one which Reyes has thought he’d never miss. He compares him to the Jean, Reyes has known for a year; of the days when he’s catatonic, of when he recalls Meridian control.

 _“Jaal thinks we’re adorable but he hates Kadara, he never fails to mention that. Also Gabriela made a bet with Vetra, Suvi and Gil on who my mystery exile boyfriend is. Gil won. He said ‘you can see it in his eyes. They have this puppy-eyed dog look whenever anyone says_ Reyes Vidal. _Especially when he was moping for three months about him._ ’ _Do I look like that? Please tell me I don’t look like that.”_

Reyes smiles. He looks so happy, content and full of life. This is the Jean he knows; the one he has fallen hard and fast for, despite everything going against them. Maybe, this is the Jean he misses; the one he can listen to for hours and never tire of him. 

The next vid is dated a few months after in a frozen landscape. Only Jean’s eyes are visible through his helmet.

_“We’re in Voeld. It’s fucking cold. My armour is set to the highest temperature it can without killing me but it’s still fucking freezing. Gabriela looks fine because she has SAM while the rest of us are suffering. I wish you were here. Would be fun.”_

_“You wish he was here so he can warm you up properly,” the Pathfinder appears on the vid; the exact copy of her brother aside from her bleached blonde hair and her_ _cheery_ _disposition._

_“Gabby!”_

_“We have a Vault to activate! Get off vidcall!”_

_“Okay, duty calls! By the way, I wouldn’t cross out a warm out from you, if you know what I mean,” his eyes grow dark. “Not sure how’s that going to work when all this planet is ice.”_

_“Jean!”_

The last one is from last year, a few months after Landing Day. The Jean on the vid call is the one he has known for over a year, life extinguished from his eyes and that white streak.

_“I know you told me to go to sleep four hours ago. See, I can’t. I tried Dr. T’Perro’s meditation techniques, didn’t work so I’m back on the sleeping pills. Sometimes, I think they’re out to get me_

_He covers his eyes. When he removes his hand, they are lined with red_

_“Anyway, this will be the last you’ll hear from me for awhile. We’re going for the Keelah Si’yah-quarian ark, outside Heleus._

Three months later, he gets his first call from Jean since this message, begging to stay with him. Months before, Jean wanted to return to the Tempest after Meridian. Something happened on the quarian ark which killed his desires to see the stars. Something he never tells Reyes like whatever happened on Meridian Control. 

Perhaps, Reyes knows nothing about him at all. Jean doesn't know anything about him either except Reyes control what he hides.

Jean doesn't.

His Omni tool beeps-a message from Keema.

 

To: Reyes Vidal

From: Keema Doghrun

Did you forget our meeting? I’m outside your flat.

 

To: Keema Doghrun

From: Reyes Vidal

I have a buzzer. Use it.

 

To: Reyes Vidal

From: Keema Doghrun

Just let me in.

 

“You look like shit,” Keema says. She sees the cigarette pinched between his fingers. “You look like _absolute_ shit.”

“Good morning to you too.”

Keema gives him a knowing look. She’s aware or at least, suspects. However, Keema says nothing until she sits comfortably on the sofa, sipping her favoured angaran sweet wine.

“Did he finally leave you?” She purses her lips, a deeper shade of gray from the wine.

“No,” he says.

“Who took him?”

Reyes inhales a long drag. “You’ll think it’s ridiculous if I tell you.”

“She leans over, propping her elbows on her lap. “Go on, I’m a listener.”

“You’ll only listen if you can get something from me.”

“Fair enough.”

A few more glasses of wine, some of which, Keema offers him, as well as another cigarette, Reyes confesses. “Jean was kidnapped by a mysterious man who calls themselves the Sphinx.”

She guffaws, bellowing deep from her belly. If Jean's life isn't at risk, then Reyes would have laughed too.

“The Sphinx? That is such a ridiculous name!” Keema wipes a tear. “What’s a Sphinx?”

“A creature from one of Earth’s mythologies. It has a human head and a lion’s body,” Reyes explains. “That’s all I know. One of my agents knows more than I do. You have to ask him.”

He sips his wine and continues. “But this Sphinx, the one who took Jean-is a pain in the ass. Wears a cat mask, can’t be traced,” he takes another drag. The corners of his eyes twitch, and he bites the inside of his cheek to stop them from forming. “They’ll kill Jean if I don’t play this game.”

“So your hands are tied? Is that it?”

“Yes,” Reyes blinks, grinning at Keema despite bile rising up his throat. “I suppose that’s the worst.”

 

 

 

He dreams.

He was flying. No shuttle or ship; he flew as free as a bird, above the thick clouds and chased the morning sun.

Then he descended.

Falling.

Falling.

Stop.

A picturesque scene taken straight from a fairytale book lay ahead, a castle touched by Midas-gold walls, golden gates and golden spires reaching for the heavens. Beneath a canopy of trees,a checkered path led him to the castle.

He follows the road, alternating between black and white, black and white, black and-gold. Golden gates showed his reflection, younger, less lines on his skin. When he touched the gates, the castle transformed. Magnificent gold changed to white wood, painted like a picket fence. The castle spires transformed to an earthy roof. Sunlight poured from the canopy of trees and in the distance, he saw mountains. The mountains he dreamed of in his youth.

He closed his hand on the doorknob.

The door opened.

“Mijo.”

Standing at the door was a ghost, an apparition of a mother he longed forgotten. Dark hair cascaded below her back; her white dress contrasted her brown skin. This was an image he only saw through sepia toned holographs and unsaturated vids, evoking a nostalgia for a home he never had.

(White suits her more than black).

She touched his cheek. “You’re late.”

‘I’m sorry’ sat at the back on his throat, unable to escape. He was always apologetic to her when the only mistake he made was having dreams and ambitions enough to build a mountain from it.

(Her dreams can build a steeper mountain than he can).

“That’s alright,” she smiled-the first he saw since nineteen. She led him to their living room. “Your guest arrived early.”

Guest?

This wasn’t his living room. He never recalled antiques over a fireplace they never had. They didn’t have an ornate piano either where his guest played a soft melody, a ballad, perhaps-no, a waltz, _their_ waltz. They danced to it once, beneath neon lights and laughed when Jean couldn’t get the steps. He was many things but never a dancer.

“I never got your name,” his mother said.

“Jean.”

“Elias,” Jean ignored him.

Elias was one of Jean’s many names. He was surprised to learn that Jean’s full name was as elegant as _Juan Alejandro Elias R. Ryder III_ and _Jean_ was a nickname bestowed upon him at two months old. Filipino nicknames, Jean laughed about it once on a lazy afternoon wrapped in each others arms on their bed.

Wait, Jean hated _Juan_ or _Alejandro_ or _Elias_ and if he could change all his official files from _Juan Alejandro Elias R. Ryder III_ to simply _Jean Ryder_ he would. So why introduce himself as _Elias_?

The phone rang.

“I’ll get that!” the woman said, heading to the kitchen.

And they were alone.

All it took to break his resolve was Jean’s heated gaze and Jean licking his lips. He pushed him on the sofa, claiming his mouth with a searing kiss. Jean was pliant and open beneath him and hot, so hot, Reyes felt he’s melting.

He’s never letting him go. Not again. Not again.

“We’re not alone,” Jean gasped in-between kisses.

“I don’t care.” He trailed his lips on his neck, biting on a pulse point which always an obscene noise from Jean’s lips.

“She’s calling for you,” Jean groaned.

“Reyes,” She said. She never called him Reyes, didn’t she?

He pushed himself from the couch. It disappeared, along with Jean and this home. Except the kitchen, and Mama holding a phone.

“Your father wants to speak to you,” she said, eyes lined red.

Reyes reached for the phone. “Hello?”

The voice from the other side didn’t belong to his father, if he could remember what his voice sounded like. His voice wasn’t deep nor did it sound like it was covered by a mask - a feline mask.

“ _Memento Mori_.”

She wept.


	5. mater dolorossa

Reyes wakes drenched in cold sweat. He heaves.

The clock says 3:47. He sees a note on the side table.

_You passed out at 13:30. Tucked you into bed before I left. -KD_

15 hours. Shit. Reyes hasn’t slept for no longer than six hours since cryo. He stretches. Every muscle in his body aches.

And his dream.

Jean is there. And Jean clings onto him like putty. Nothing has changed. He kisses him like he chases after a dream-hard and possessive, and all Reyes can do is melt. With him, it’s so easy to let go. With him, it’s easy to not think about the universe.

Without him, everything breaks apart.

And she. She seems so _real_ like Reyes can touch her and feel a warmth he hasn’t experienced since since…

He rubs his eyes, thinks of the holo graph gathering dust in a dark corner of his shuttle. Relics of a galaxy light years away where Reyes’ name means nothing.

They belong in the Milky Way. They should stay in the Milky Way.

Reyes sighs. He scratches his head. Jean’s life is on the line and he has no time reopening closed wounds. He checks his Omni tool. Countless of unimportant messages scroll by, blurring together in the darkness.

At the top of his inbox is an ominous email from the Sphinx.

 

To: Reyes Vidal

From: [ENCRYPTED]

Charlatan,

Second riddle.

Remember, four hours.

-S

Attached to the email is a text file with a series of numbers he cannot understand. As he is about to send his message, his Omni tool flashes a vid. Two golden eyes stare at him as if ripping him apart.

“Two hours have passed,” the Sphinx says.

He forwards the message to Lisera with an order, _‘SOLVE'_ and puts on his flight suit.

 

An hour. He has an hour left by the time Reyes arrives to the Draullir base. Marching in, he ignores Crux’ report that Tiberius’ records have been wiped out. He’ll deal with that later, for now he has more pressing issues to attend to.

Jean has an hour left.

“You solved it?” He says to Lisera.

“Yeah, easier than the last one,” she says, confident smile painting her lips. “I swear the Sphinx didn’t even try.”

She tilts her head where Ferreira and Aquila discuss over a datapad. “Ferreira and Aquila are on it right now. From what I heard, it’s not good.”

“And we have an hour left,” he mutters.

“An hour? Shit. I know he means the world to you-”

"Thank you, Lisera."

\--

They're deep in conversation when Reyes comes by--Fereira more so than Aquila who nods at Ferreira's suggestions. Reyes misses most of it. Glancing at the data pad, he figures it's not good.

"Boss!" Ferreira calls. He walks over with said data pad in hand. 

"Have you figured it-"

“No but the riddle it's written in Japanese, Spanish and a script I don’t recognize,” Ferreira interrupts. One of these days, Reyes will teach him a lesson on being careful with his words.

“Here.” He hands Reyes a datapad. “I’ve translated most of the text, aside from the script which doesn’t look like anyone uses. From what I’ve scanned, it appears to be an ancient script from the old world. _Truly_ ancient, long before Prothean-”

He’s blathering again.

Rolling his eyes, Reyes cuts him off. “Did you at least try using a translator?”

“None of our translators can recognize it,” Aquila says. “They’re not set to read old world languages.”

Reyes looks at the data pad. The script has been scrambled into unknowns. If he hasn’t known the data pad contains a riddle, he’d think this is complete gibberish. 

 

> _The ᜊᜊᜁ who comes after a storm._
> 
> _ᜐᜒᜌ who gives kind hunters ginger which turns into ᜄᜒᜈ᜔ᜆᜓ_
> 
> _I am ᜀᜅ᜔ ᜇᜒᜏᜆ of bundok ᜋᜃᜒᜎᜒᜅ᜔_
> 
>  
> 
> _I am the woman who ᜆᜓᜋᜆᜅᜒᜐ᜔._
> 
> _Threw her boys down the river in a fit of rage._
> 
> _She searches along the riverbanks hoping to see her boys once more._
> 
> _ᜀᜈᜓ ᜀᜅ᜔ ᜉᜅᜎᜈ᜔ ᜃᜓ᜶_

They have to do an analysis on it, give Lisera the script and figure out what it is.

But they’re running out of time.

“Can we try to solve it based on what you’ve translated?” Reyes asks.

“That’s what we’ve been trying to do,” Aquila says. He pauses, stares blankly at the wall as if lost in thought and speaks. "Ferreira has an idea."

Ferreira blinks. He asserts, "It's a _theory_."

Theory or not, it's their only option.

"Okay, what is this theory?" Reyes asks.

Ferreira gets up and paces around the table. Reyes swears he hears gears turning inside his head. 

"If we consider the second stanza about the woman with the boys," Ferreira begins, "and how she threw them over a river." 

"Wait!" He stops. His eyes light up and he continues, "I think this stanza is talking about this folktale, _La Llorona_ "

"And?" Reyes raises an eyebrow.  "How does that answer the riddle?"

"Here's where it's all theory. Based on the question from the last riddle, I think the answer to the riddle has something to do with the woman," he snaps his fingers. "Her name, maybe?"

It's a guess. Reyes isn't sure if it's a good one; not without the complete riddle. 

But the Sphinx rings on his Omni tool before he considers his alternatives. 

"Times up. Do you have an answer for me?" From the other end, Reyes hears the sound of a metal lid opening and closing. It taunts him.

Reyes glances at Ferreira. He mouths, _what's her name?_

_Maria_

"Maria," Reyes answere and hopes with every fiber of his being, it's right. 

A map of Kadara flashes on his Omni tool screen and Reyes is relieved. A red dot flashes on a different location on the map at a place the angaras of Kadara consider the Valley of the Gods--Kurinth's Valley.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you who cannot see the script, I've included a screenshot [here](https://i.imgur.com/iueOJqG.png). The script used is Baybayin and I've also included it in the reference doc linked at the end of this fic.


	6. acta est fabula

This is his kingdom; a sea of green meets with the jagged rocks; crystal pools shimmer beneath Govakarm’s rays. He sees them all at the peak of Kurinth’s Valley and he allows himself one moment to take it in before facing the abyss.

It’s dark.

Reyes turns on the light of his Omni tool. Nothing, the building is completely empty. He sees no signs of a cache or a hidden wall keeping the cache.

Last time, Tiberius came. What does the Sphinx want from him?

The walls move. They slide and shift, creating more walls and changing the room’s shape. Reyes rolls away in time as a pair of walls meet halfway. They stop. He is in a dark room. Aquila and Crux must be somewhere else.

All the lights turned on. Three figures sat before him; their heads are covered with sacks. From their features, Reyes can figure one of them is an asari, the other is a salarian and the other, a turian.

“One of the three works with me,” the Sphinx says, “they took him. Kill the one and I’ll give you the cache.”

“Why are you telling me this? Aren’t they your allies?”

A long silence comes from the other side.

“I am giving you a favour.”

Three figures, an asari, a salarian and a turian, one of them took Jean.

Reyes inspects the asari. Her breathing is steady. Faint scars on her arms tell stories of battles from long past. When he leans over as though to interrogate her, pieces of her battle-hardened façade crack.

He inspects the salarian. Lines crease the skin on his arms, winding tight on his bones. He is oddly still, if Reyes hasn’t seen the small rise and fall of his chest, he’d assume the salarian is dead. The salarian flinches when Reyes so much breathes on him.

Finally, he inspects the turian. He sits upright, as any turian Reyes has seen before. Military training, he assumes. The turian shakes on his seat. Muffled noises come from the bag when Reyes leans over.

He looks at the salarian again.

He shoots him.

“I did what you asked, I killed the salarian,” Reyes calls.

One of the back panels slide open, revealing a red box inside. Reyes takes it.

“They are all innocent.”

“I figured,” Reyes says.

“How?”

“The innocent have nothing to hide while the guilty do. You don't have to see their faces or listen to them, their body tells all.”

“Why kill the salarian?”

“Old, wrinkles on his skin. Looks like he has nothing left to lose.” Maybe, he’s wrong and the salarian has a family waiting for him in cryo. Maybe, he’s wrong and the salarian _has_ a life, dreams outside this planet and Reyes has snatched them from him.

“You must have a lot of experience.”

“I do.”

No one gets away in this line of field with clean hands.

Reyes opens the cache. The datapad contains...a continuation of the last one, perhaps?

 

 

> _LADY SERKET HOSTS A DINNER PARTY_
> 
> _After, she invites Kanya the maiden who arrives with the Lady of Justice, carrying turquoise Scales. Next are the Twins, Pollux and Castor who have also invited Ganymede, carrying water from river Eridanos. The Lady declines unless the Water-Bearer halves them, and takes the one which is whole._

He’ll send the message to Lisera later. First, he has to get out of here, find Crux and Aquila, find out how the asari, salarian and turian are related to the Sphinx, if they are at all. He needs a foothold, just one foothold on the Sphinx and he’ll make sense of the pieces. The Milky Way spitted out no ones like him, they can’t keep being _no ones_ in a galaxy meant to be a new start.

Or is this the new start the Sphinx has been looking for? Freed from the Citadel’s bureaucracy and rules to impose a game....

Then wait for the third riddle.

He’s done a lot of waiting. By now, he should have rescued Jean and thrown the Sphinx into a prison they deserve, yet he hasn’t even began. All Reyes has done is solve nonsensical riddles, and follow orders like a peon when he is king.

“You could always say no,” the Sphinx comes again as he leaves the room.

“And the price? _His life_ ,” Reyes hisses. He shakes his head. “No. Never _._ ”

“Would he forgive you once he finds out what you have done?”

The question has plagued his thoughts since falling for Jean-Alliance poster child, a by-the-books soldier whose world is filled with black and white whereas his are shades of gray.

“I’ve done worse things long before I met him.”

The door opens. Outside is a long hallway, different from the one he came in. There are no doors or windows or any exit in sight, only a control panel at the end of the hallway. He approaches it. The control panel has two buttons, one labeled FIRE, the other is labeled GAS.

“Why don’t we finish this right here, Charlatan? I’ll give you the cache so long as you do me a favour.” The Sphinx says, sounding threatening rather than the jovial tone they present.

The panel screens show two rooms, Aquila’s and Crux’s.

“Sacrifice one,” the Sphinx says.

“Wait, sacrifice one?” Reyes smiles, hiding the dread which threatens to crawl out. He swallows thickly. “I believe you are-”

The Sphinx cuts him off. “Sacrifice one or I’ll kill the boy.”

The transmission ends.

Reyes looks at the screens. In one screen, Crux investigates her location,attempting to find a way out. In the other screen, Aquila sits absentmindedly, perhaps, waiting for Reyes to come rescue them. Their fates are being weighted at this moment and they don’t know the Charlatan is their judge, jury and executioner.

 _You could always say no_ , comes the Sphinx as an unwanted conscience. They tempt him to consider the unthinkable.

He says no and he’s freed. No more Sphinx, no more riddles to solve and no more chasing caches. Crux and Aquila live.

But if he says no, then Jean dies because of him. Because he’s a coward and can’t make the necessary sacrifices to save him. Reyes can’t bear living in a world where he’s responsible for Jean’s death.

So He looks at the screen again and decides his agents’ fates. Crux investigates her location, skimming the parameter of the room. But Aquila knows, having a glint in his old eyes and a somber expression in his face. The old man stares directly where he thinks the camera is and mutters something. Studying his lips, Reyes makes out the phrase, _quam celerrime ad astra_.

 _Quam celerrime ad astra_. It’s familiar, carved out from his memory. It brings him to an idyllic period, watching sunsets on a remote planet light years away from Earth and waving goodbyes to an Alliance fighter when the sun rises.

He presses FIRE. Both screens blink black.

Reyes doesn’t see Aquila burn.

 

\--

“Boss!” Crux calls, rushing out of her room. Auburn strands stick out in clumps around her head. She collapses on her knees, breathing haggardly. He lets her recover before keying in the code to Aquila’s room, the one across from hers.

“What happened?” She gasps, still short of breath. Reyes doesn’t answer.

The stench of burnt flesh is thick and heady. He smells it before he steps inside. At his feet lies the consequence of his decision--a blackened corpse. Once it carried a familiar face, now it’s charred and unrecognizable.

“Is that…” Crux says behind him. She gasps when she realizes. “Oh God.”

“Yes.”

It's all he can say--all he _wants_ to say. He feels nothing, not even remorse for the man he burned alive for the sake of saving another. He clenches his fists hard enough to indent his palms behind his gloves. 

At the back of his head, the monster the Sphinx tells him he is, feels triumphant over the victory. 

Walking across the room, Reyes takes the cache. When he opens it, two data pads fall. The first data pad contains another passage from Serket’s dinner party.

 

> _LADY SERKET HOSTS A DINNER PARTY_
> 
> _As the dinner comes to a close, the Ram makes an appearance with the Rat and the Dragon. The Lady challenges her to a duel. If the Ram wins, she will host next year’s dinner party. She wins, and brings a bark from the nearby Rowan tree as an offering._
> 
> _And the Lady Serket bids you farewell, kind pretender.  Acta est fabula, plaudite!_
> 
> _The play has ended, applaud!_

The other data pad is blank. When Reyes taps it on, an empty cell of 12 digits appear on the screen. 

He stuffs it in his pack, along with the other data pad. For now, he has to get out and clean the smell of death on his body. 

"What do we do?" Crux whispers, crouching over Aquila's charred body.

"We'll bury him up the mountain," Reyes' mouth moves though his body feels far away, on a different plane away from all of this. 

 

They bury his body by a nearby rock and drew a makeshift cross on his grave. Neither have anything to say; Crux never believed. Reyes stopped believing a long time ago after God lets a hero die and keeps criminals like him alive. 

(Never thought the hero has a wife waiting for him. Never thought the hero has an only son waiting for him, dreaming to be just like him.)

So they stand in silence. Not uttering a word until the sun has receded well below the mountains.  

 

"I never asked this."

Crux quirks an eyebrow. 

"I never asked how you knew about the demodulation stuff or whatever it's called," Reyes says. 

She laughs despite the incident on Kurinth's Valley. She never laughs before. 

"I was a sound engineer. That's what they brought me here for."

She says nothing for the rest of their flight to Draullir.

Neither does he. 


	7. rex duodecim angelus

He was flying on a spacecraft.  

The cockpit was tight, the panels had more levers, buttons and the interface divided into two smaller interfaces. He piloted a wheel stick. This wasn’t his Kodiak. He was on an Alliance fighter. He felt like a child again with restless dreams of adventures and heroics; playing a dashing pilot on a fighter plane parked in his front yard.

He was his father.

The plane shook, trembling to his very core. The smoke on his lips was bitter, and the smell of gas filled his nostrils. It descended, falling from the sky like a meteorite; the unbearable heat crawled into his skin.

“Vidal! You’re losing altitude!” A masculine voice called in his ear, perhaps belonging to an operator.

“You think?” He said yet the voice wasn’t his. It was hoarse, gruff and had the inflection of an old soldier longing for rest.

“Just tell me your approximate location and we’ll come get you,” the operator said.

“Patch me a call to my wife.”

“Vidal, tell me your location. We can’t send out S&R if you don’t tell us-”

“Patch me call to my wife, Clara Hernandez.” The words coming out weren’t his either. He would have said yes and given the location. No, he wouldn’t be even on this fighter; he would have taken a parachute and jumped to safety.

But this wasn’t his play to perform. He played a soldier, a hero and a good man. All of the qualities he did not possess.

“Hello?” A woman comes through his ear. Clara.

“Clara,” he said. “Clara Clara Clara.”

“What is it, my love?”

The affection was unfamiliar, one he only saw through fleeted moments or heard in fond anecdotes of a husband who was long gone. One he missed dearly, for her affection kept him close, and kept him alive long after he died.

And what he and Jean had was incomparable. Some days, he wondered how they were able to fit when they were incompatible in many ways. Not like his parents, they completed each other; two halves of a pomegranate, like alpha and omega.

“Goodbye,” he said, biting back the tears his father may or may not have shed. These weren’t his final words. Father would have made it poetic, would have sung ballads to Mother if he could.

He didn’t think of his mother.

He thought of Jean on the other end, hearing his final words. A short, simple _goodbye_ for he wouldn’t let his farewell linger, for Jean to remember him at their happiest.

Not unlike Mother. Never like Mother.

“Goodbye? Tiago, what do you mean?” Clara said. She was smiling, he could tell even if he couldn’t see her face. She always smiled, even when he saw how brittle she was.

“Is Reyes there?” He asked.

“He’s at flight school, remember? Poor boy wanted to he like you.”

“Poor boy, indeed. And now, his Papa’s on a one way ticket to the ground.” Tears pricked the corner of his eyes. On the other end, Clara sobbed.

On the other end, he heard the door open. The footsteps that followed were familiar to him and the concerned call to his mother, “Ma?”

“He’s here, Tiago,” Clara whispered.

“Hello?” He sounded so innocent and unmarked by the ugly realities of the world.Nineteen, he was nineteen here and barely at the cusp of adulthood. Maybe, this was his turning point. When a man he thought ruled the skies was brought down from the heavens.

“I don’t have much time _mijo_ .” The smoke was too thick and his lungs felt constricted. “I just want you to always remember _quam celerrime ad astra_.”

“ _Quam celerrime ad astra_ ,” he repeated, never knowing what it means.

And he closed his eyes, waiting for a crash that never came. Instead, he was propelled into darkness.

Reyes wakes with tears prickling his eyes and an ache on his lower back. He blinks. Metallic walls greet him and the bed-if it can be considered a bed-is less comfortable than the one he has at home.

Crux opens the door. “You’re awake!” She crosses to his side. “I put you to rest after we arrived at Draullir. You didn’t look so good.”

So he’s in Draullir. He rubs his temples, easing the pounding in his head and clearing his thoughts from the dream.

That _dream_.

He is his father on the brink of death; the side of the story Reyes never got to hear nor thought they’d resurface.

They’re dreams. They don’t matter. Unless, his conscience is trying to give him a lesson-his father is a hero and died too early or never forget where you come from. They don’t help him find Jean, however.

“How’s the riddle?” Reyes stretches his back, feeling his muscles ease from his uncomfortable sleeping position. He follows Crux to the door.

She leads him outside. “Ferreira is still working on it.”

 

On the table are data pads laid askew, containing pictures of an Egyptian goddess with a scorpion on her head. Ferreira’s feet are propped on the table, looking at his Omni tool. He scratches his dark hair. With Aquila dead, Ferreira has no one to discuss ideas with.

Reyes arches his eyebrow at Crux-a silent question if Ferreira knows what happened. Crux shakes her head. No one else in the Collective probably knows and Reyes needs a plan on how he should reveal the organization they joined isn’t invincible.

Usually, they keep the deaths of their members behind closed doors

“Have you solved it?” Reyes asks again.

“Boss!” Ferreira jolts. “Shit, no, I haven’t.”

He scans the room and asks what Reyes fears. “Where’s Aquila?”

Crux looks at him, waiting for his answer. When Reyes says nothing, she speaks. "He’s dead."

Ferreira's eyes widen. He stands up, balling up his hands into fists. He walks up to Reyes.

 **"** Why are we doing this?" Ferreira leans close; his eyes gleam with a fire Reyes hasn't seen before."This is pointless, and for one person."

“You’re speaking out of turn," Reyes says flatly, controlling the heat bubbling in his chest.

“Aquila is _dead_ .” Ferreira’s voice drips with poison. “And all for this _Jean_ . Who is he even to you? Who are _we_ to you?”

Reyes answers him with a slap on the face, hard enough to bruise. 

“Serket is the Egyptian goddess of fertility, medicine, nature, animals, magic and healing venomous stings,” Ferreira grunts, holding his reddened cheek. “Her symbol is a scorpion.”

And he finds the medic.

“Thank you, Ferreira.”

Serket, Reyes has heard of her before; another Serket different from the Egyptian goddess. Jean often speaks about her, and her tale with a young man who stands in his bedroom during his thirteenth birthday. He can’t follow her story or why this young man isn’t stuck at home despite the title or the adventures he has with his friends yet he entertains, if only to catch a glimpse of Jean outside the poster boy he shaped himself into.

Birthday. Serket, _Scorpio_. He rereads the passage. _Lady Serket the Scorpion queen invites the Ox._ _Lady Serket the Scorpion queen invites the Water-bearer._

He knows the answer.

“These are based on the zodiac signs.”

Crux raises an eyebrow. “Zodiac signs? I’m not an expert on mythology like Ferreira but I don’t recall an Ox in the zodiac signs.”

“No, maybe not _that_ zodiac but others from other cultures.” His whole body shivers, feeling triumphant that he’s so close, so so close.  

“Lisera, find every mention of the Zodiac signs on the extranet,” he commands.

“Okay, if it is based on the zodiacs then how is this related to the passcode?” Crux inquires.

“It uses the order.”

Figuring out the passcode proves to be simple, once they have the order of the zodiac signs. They enter the number based on their appearance on the party, eight for Scorpio, two for Ox and so on and so forth. Before the next hour has passed, they have entered the code on the data pad and a map to a location, where Jean should be held. 

8256735114\. Reyes enters it. The data pad has one instruction, ‘come alone.’

“This could be a trap,” Crux says while he straps on his armour and weapons.  

“I know.”

She leans against the door frame. “And? You have a plan?”

“I do,” Reyes grins as though he owns the world. “And you’re exactly the person I need.”

 

\--

The warehouse is dark and quiet. Every footstep Reyes takes bounces off the walls, and ripples through the hallway. The maze of hallways is never-ending, taking him through dead ends and looping him back to where he began. He sees light twinkling in the darkness. He follows, his heart racing in his chest.

The scent of iron fills his nostrils Crimson, _blood_ is splattered in streaks across the walls, on the floor where it pools and drips from a chair-- _Jean._ Every cell in his body freezes. His heart stops, his lungs cease to function after witnessing the sight before him.

Strapped on the chair is or was Jean--a headless carcass.

Desolation strums a haunting refrain in his heart. He falls on his knees. Tears itch at the corners of his eyes. What he has held for days run down his cheeks in a silent sob. He’s too late.

He’s too fucking late.

What did he do wrong? He solved every riddle the Sphinx gave him, killed Tiberius, a salarian with a name he’d never know and signed Aquila’s death warrant to save Jean.

That’s why. Instead of creating his solution, he chooses to follow one. The Sphinx has made a puppet out of him.

But would have it made a difference if Reyes crafted his own plans?

Reyes holds his hand. Once warm against his own is now cold, and pale as curdled milk.

“Jean,” he whispers a cry and a prayer both to whichever God out there is listening to a man like him, make this be another dream.

A hiss, from where? Gas fills up the room. Suddenly, the air around him is thick and heady. Every muscle in his body relaxes. He collapses on the ground; he fights to keep his eyes open to no avail.

The last he sees before dark are golden eyes on a feline mask.


	8. mors certa, hora incerta

“Reyes?”

Stars fill his vision. Every muscle in his body throbs. He’s in a room with a single window or door. Standing behind the glass door is a ghost or should be a ghost.

“Jean.”

He’s alive.

“Jean,” he mutters again as though his breathing has stopped before this moment. _He’s alive, he’s alive he’s alive_. The mantra repeats in his head.

“How did you get in here?” Jean asks.

Tears clump in his eyelashes. He blinks them away before they fall. “I can ask you the same question. How did you get in here?”

Jean considers him, staring at his eyes as if seeing the fringes of the galaxy. He looks away.

“I got a message from an unknown sender saying the Pathfinder is in danger,” he says. “I went. Then the next thing I know, I’m trapped inside this room.”

“You’ve been in this room the whole time?” The syllables weigh heavy on his tongue.

He nods, and Reyes’ entire world shatters. All this time, he has been racing against time to save another person. Then, who is the one in the warehouse? Another casualty, like Tiberius, the salarian, Aquila.

Reyes curls his hand on the window. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Jean scoffs and crosses his arms. “Why should _I_ tell you?”

“So I can help you. So you didn’t have to be in this mess in the first place. We could have solved this _together_ , Jean.”

“And yet you never let me help you with your problems.”

“Because my problems _aren’t_ for you to solve.”

“Then this isn’t your problem to solve either.” Jean walks off to a corner across from the glass door.

“Jean,” he begs; his fingertips leave imprints on the glass. “Look, we need to find an exit.”

Jean stomps on the floor. It rattles. “That’s your only exit. Don’t want to go that way unless you want to fall.”

“That is from biotics,” he points to an indent on the wall. “Don’t know what this room made out of but it’s stronger than any metal we know. These marks, however-” He crouches, running his fingers along the lines. “are eerily similar to the marks we saw in the Vaults.”

“Must be RemTech,” Reyes says.

“Could be. But only the Initiative has access to RemTech and last I recall they haven’t found a way to use it for construction.”

Reyes is amazed.

“What else did you think I was doing this entire time? Waiting for you to save me?”

He laughs only because it’s true.

 

\--

Hours have passed, maybe days. Reyes feels tracker the behind his sleeve. He can call Crux, rescue them from this place, wherever it is. No, not now, not until the Sphinx reveals themselves. Jean hasn’t moved from the corner of his room.

Reyes has him back yet it feels like he doesn’t have him at all. He can fix this, he can try; strike a conversation both of them can relate to.

“Do you ever think of your father?”

Jean looks up. Of course, he does. Alec Ryder plays a central role in his life, no matter how absent his father is. Unlike Reyes’s, whose entire life is dedicated to heroism.

“He’s dead. Does it matter?” Jean says.

“Do you think about his death?”

Jean bites his lip and looks away. He says, “I wasn’t there when he died. Gabriela never told me the complete story of how he died so I never know. Maybe, it’s for the best.” He wipes the corners of his eyes where tears begin to form. “Anyway, he’s been dead for a year. Why’d you ask?”

The smile Reyes gives is wide and all teeth; he feels them tighten at the corners. He pushes his haunting dreams at the back of his mind. “Just curious.”

 

\--

“Have you heard of the prisoner’s dilemma?,” the Sphinx comes after awhile.

Prisoner's dilemma, a principle in game theory which explains that two people may not cooperate with each other. Reyes has used it before to get information

“See the buttons on the wall? Green means ally. Red means betray. Pick ally and your opponent picks betray, your opponent is freed while your door opens. Likewise, pick betray and your opponent picks ally then, you are freed while your opponent’s door opens. I don’t need to explain what happens after the door has opened. However, if both pick ally, then both your rooms shall move four metres closer to safety. If both pick betray, you’ll move closer to the ravine.”

Reyes asks, “what happens after?”

“We’ll play again until one or both of you exits on here or down,” the Sphinx says. 

The glass window closes. Reyes is alone.

Ally or Betray. 

The quintessential question, the one Reyes fears he'll eventually have to decide with Jean. He hadn't expect to do it with a single press of a button.

If he picks Ally, he saves Jean. But what if Jean betrays him and sends him falling to his death?

He can't do that, can he?

Reyes thinks of everything that has happened between them, from their first meeting under Tartarus' neon lights to the cave then now, and Reyes realizes he hasn't done much to earn his trust.

So he takes a leap of faith, one greater than the leap he took to cross galaxies and selects ally.

"The voting is done!" Says the Sphinx. 

Reyes doesn't feel the drop. The glass door slides open and he sees Jean, standing in front of the buttons. Ally flashes green.

He breathes a sigh of relief.

"Well done! Both of you!" the Sphinx cheers. Their voice turns cold, "but I'm afraid we can't continue the game. Charlatan, I asked you to come alone."

A heavy weight settles in his stomach. The screen on one panel flashes the perimiter outside the warehouse; of Crux and Ferreira hiding behind a structure.

"You disobeyed me You know what happens when you disobey."

Whatever argument he had is punched out from him as floor below him opens.

They fall.

Zero-grav training never equipped him for this, then again zero-grav training assumes you’ll have a safety hook to fall back on. Never this.

He’s free falling some hundred feet above a ravine. Reyes has one thing he can do. He propels himself at Jean. Static clings on his skin as he holds him for the last time.

“I love you.”

And he braces for impact.


	9. quam celerrime ad astra

It’s a common saying. Life flashes before your eyes when you die.

The first two years mean nothing. Mama Clara says he was born in a hospital in Santiago while Papa Vidal liberates Shanxi from the turians. He comes home a hero-the Star of Terra on his lapel and a promotion to Air Marshall.

Then he whisks them away to an idyllic new colony in the Exodus cluster. 

Neither his childhood nor adolescent years mattered. He was a boy with a famous name tacked on him like an insignia. Mama Clara raised him alone like all the kids in the colony whose father’s occupation is “hero.” She taught him to be good or as best she can from some small town girl from the Andes as she says as though her upbringing can cover up her flaws. 

“Be like your father,” she used to say while ruffling his hair yet Papa Vidal was rarely home to show him how to.

No wonder, he turned out to be just like her. 

Nineteen. Nineteen is when all it started to matter. Nineteen, he comes home to a weeping mother and grieving wife. Nineteen, for the first time, he hears fear in his father’s voice as he says his goodbye. Nineteen, they have a funeral for an empty casket draped in blue, red and white, and  _ gold _ for the Alliance.  _ Quam celerrime ad astra _ is engraved on his tombstone. 

Twenty-one, he finishes flight school. Twenty-one, he spits on the face of the Systems Alliance logo and figures he can do better. Twenty-one, he flies a counterfeit shuttle through neon lights for his first job.

Neon lights. Omega to Ilium, Ilium to Omega and back and forth and back and forth until the two blur together; Ilium’s cosmopolitan city with its high rise buildings transposed over Omega’s gritty underworld. The two are a perfect fit.

Mama Clara takes his money, doesn’t care if the credits are stained with blood, doesn’t care if they aren’t Santiago’s pristine badges, clean and stamped with the Systems Alliance insignia. Maybe, she never cared to begin with. She’s just some small town girl from the Andes who dreamed big-her American dream if they lived over a century back. And she gets it, regardless if her only son will never see the place where her ancestors are from. And some days, he thinks Jean has it lucky because Jean has _Malolos. Bulacan. Philippines. Earth._ mapped on his palm whereas Reyes can’t name the small town on the Andes mountains where Clara Hernandez is from. She got her dream, she always does. She’s him in every way, from the colour of her skin  to the ambition in her heart. Her eyes are different,dark like galaxies filled with endless stars.

Stars, always stars. Milky Way stars then Andromeda stars; never changing, always watching. Do they watch now as he falls to his grave?

Andromeda. Nexus. He wakes to a station bathed in fire. They tell him to scout, find something or  _ anything _ . He doesn’t. None of them do and the Nexus is plunged into an uprising. Kadara is their reparation. 

Jean. 

He marches into his life like a fire Reyes struggles to put out. Somewhere between his barbed words, Reyes catches himself falling. Memories of their time together flash before his eyes, from the kiss on the storage room to the kiss during on top of the rooftops. Then the brief time they were together while Reyes pretends to be the man Jean always wanted- _ needed _ . 

_ I thought you were!  _ Jean points a pistol at him when the truth finally comes out. Over a year, later it still stings. 

One month. A month later, he and Jean solve a crime. A serial killer on the loose like there haven’t been similar cases on Kadara before. Only then does the Initiative care because it happened on Ditaeon. 

Diteaon. When Jean confessed he was so damn afraid of falling in love with someone like him. He’s not a hero, never is. He’s just some boy from some colony in some cluster, born to some parents from some country he never got to see. He has nothing, never did, not even a name tacked on him like an insignia.

All he has are dreams. When he kisses Jean that night, he wonders if they are all he can offer in exchange for his love.

(The stars were beautiful that night, most he has ever seen. Made gorgeous when they danced on Jean--naked, splayed and wanting.) 

_ Quam celerrime ad astra _ . There it is again, a constant mantra taunting him. What does it mean, again? Papa Vidal once sat him on his lap, and they’d watch the sunset together. He tells him, a boy of 4 or 5, 7 or 8, 11 or 12, nineteen,  _ quam celerrime ad astra _ . And he goes to be a hero once more. 

_ Quam celerrime ad astra _ . Whatever it means, to him it means ‘goodbye.’ The final phrase Papa Vidal said before leaving. The final phrase his father uttered before he crashed. 

As all twenty nine years of his life flash before his eyes, he realizes he’s done nothing significant at all. 

That’s a lie. 

He’s the shadowy leader of a gang spread across the cluster, and the de facto ruler of a planet. He took down Sloane Kelly and has the human Pathfinder wrapped around his fingers.

Your father was a household name to a continent at 25, hero to the entire world at 30. They sing ballads about his name from the Sol system to the Attican Traverse. What have you done? 

What have you done? 


	10. tu fui ego eris

When Reyes opens his eyes, he sees Kadara’s skies in an everlasting twilight. If this is the afterlife or whatever comes after death, he wants to laugh. He’s back in a place he considers home, more than the idyllic colony in the Exodus cluster, more than the Andes mountains he never got to see. 

Static wraps around him like a fog; the hairs on his skin stand up. A warm body is pressed on top of him- _ Jean _ ; heart stammering-full of life on his chest. Wait-

There’s no blood, where their bodies hit the bottom of the ravine.

“It worked!” Jean says, out of breath, “fuck, it actually worked!”

It clicks.

This isn’t the afterlife. 

They are on Kadara, on solid ground, alive.

“Bravo,” the Sphinx claps. “I didn’t expect-”

The rest of the sentence is knocked out by a human-shaped battering ram wrapped in biotic energy. The Sphinx topples on the ground. Jean stands before them; biotics whip around him like a fire on a candle wick.

The Sphinx groans. They attempt to get up only to be lifted up with biotics and flung to a wall. 

Reyes hasn’t seen Jean use his biotics so viscerally. They have always been controlled, refined to near perfection. Often, he uses them to trap enemies in a whirlpool or prime explosions for his sister.

Now, they flare, bursting at the seams.

Reyes is terrified.

And mesmerized. 

The Sphinx remains still. Jean charges a ball of biotic energy.

Then, it happens fast.

One minute, Jean swings his fist back, ready for a final blow. The next, the Sphinx brandishes a grenade.

And flings it at Reyes.

Jean leaps. A translucent shimmering barrier wraps around them. Grenade explodes. Jean crumples on the ground.

“Jean!”

No, no, no, please no. Reyes hasn’t escaped death to only to lose him. He cradles him in his arms. For the first time, he calls for a God, a miracle to save him.

“EMP. Fuck.” his breathing is ragged. Trembling fingers caress Reyes’ cheek. “I’ll be fine. They’re out of it. Finish them off.”

He reaches inside his pocket, and fishes out a firaan. 

“Here. Made it for Gabby but she never used it” Jean hands it to him. “Has a stronger pulse than a typical electric firaan. And hold it up-” he presses a button on the hilt. Small electric shocks appear from the blade.

Reyes nods. 

The Sphinx is on their feet. They limp. Gold eyes shine in an unquenchable fury. Reyes’ eyes are the same. He clenches the firaan’s hilt and attacks.

He aims for their neck. The Sphinx dodges his every move. Reyes hits their arm. They hiss when he sends electric shocks through the hilt.

In retaliation, they smack Reyes on his cheek. He stumbles. The Sphinx ducks, twists and kicks the firaan out of his hand. It creates an arc in the air then drops down the ravine. 

The Sphinx lunges at him, collapsing on the ground shy off the edge. Ferocious eyes glint, boring into his very own. Their hands wrap around his neck, and squeeze.

“You see, the difference between you and I, Charlatan is I have no one holding me back,” the Sphinx hisses. 

They squeeze tighter. Reyes gasps; the air in his esophagus constricts. 

He is going to die. 

He is going to die and he has no alternatives, no plans, no second chances.

If this is his truly his last, then there’s one thing he wants to ask. “Why?”

The Sphinx sounds delighted, so amicable, so  _ human _ when they say, ”Because I wanted to play a game.”

They laugh, melodic not dark. The last sound he hears as consciousness slips from him, instead of a choir of angels welcoming him to an afterlife or-

“Reyes!” 

Jean. 

He  _ crawls _ for him, digging his fingers on the ground. His determination is stupendous. Jean Ryder has a soldier’s heart, and it scares Reyes, how much Jean will truly go.But it’s enough to distract the Sphinx. Using what strength he can, Reyes headbutts them. They hiss. Their mask cracks where he strikes.

Reyes seizes the opportunity to turn the tide. He flips them around so the Sphinx is on their back. He strikes, gritting his teeth as he lands punch after punch on their face. All of his anger, fury, anxieties are loaded in his punches. The bottom half of the Sphinx’ mask shatters completely. 

 

Their skin is pale, too pale for them to be human.

 

Reyes grasps their neck. He stands and holds the Sphinx before the drop. They don’t struggle, clawing for dear life. They stay still.

 

“Tu fui, ego eris,” the Sphinx hisses between teeth, marking Reyes with those exact words.  _ Tu fui, ego eris _ . 

I was you.

You will be me.

A common inscription on tombstones, coupled with  _ memento mori.  _ Remember death. A reminder of one’s mortality that regardless of your status or power, death is inevitable. Though by the way the Sphinx narrows their eyes-golden irises and so much like his-and the dark grin which follows after, the intent is much more sinister.

_ I was you. _ That before the Sphinx, they were just another nobody wanting to make their mark in the galaxy, this one or the one before.

_ You will be me _ . A precognition of his future, and if the Sphinx is being kind, a warning of what’s to come.  In the quest for his ambitions, he’ll follow the exact steps as the Sphinx.

_ To be someone _ echoes at the back of his cerebral cortex and ripples throughout his body. He lets go. The Sphinx doesn’t scream when they fall. Only the mask, which slipped off the Sphinx, reminded that they were ever around.

Reyes catches it as it floats down. For a moment, he sees his reflection on the porcelain mask. The red lines shifting to fit his face.

“Reyes,” warm fingertips touch his spine and he is brought back to reality. 

The mask slips from his hand and falls down the ravine to meet its owner. Reyes spins around. He wraps Jean in a tight embrace, curling against his body. Maybe there are tears, wetting the crook of Jean’s shoulder. He can’t remember. He doesn’t care.

He misses him. 


	11. serenade

He misses him.

No, he _misses_ him.

This is familiar. Jean is pinned against the apartment door while he lavishes his skin.

“We should ah-” he gasps when Reyes bites bites his neck; turns into a moan when he soothes the mark with a deep kiss.

Jean clings on him, white-knuckled and digging into his flesh through layers upon layers of clothes. He’s desperate, hooking a leg on Reyes’ waist; seeking friction where he wants- _needs_. The door behind them slides open. They tumble inside and on the floor in a mess of limbs and half-discarded clothes.

They don’t make it to the bedroom.

Time seems meaningless. Hours pass by, days even and he can’t recall how long Reyes has been inside him or when he has kissed him last or if he lay beneath him, clawing red marks on his back, shuddering when he peaks or if he takes him on his lap, drawing his name again and again until it becomes his too.

They blur, meteorites dissipating in the atmosphere. Maybe, it has happened. Maybe, that’s why Reyes can’t recall where he ends and begins or if there has been a time when Jean hasn’t been in his life.

And if there has, how did he survive?

 

 

When Jean is asleep beside him on their heap of clothes, sated and at peace, Reyes untangles himself and pads for a cigarette and a lighter. He slips on a pair of pants, one not discarded in their mess, and walks to the balcony. Nights are becoming colder this season on Kadara, he assumes. Almost three years and no one on Kadara port can figure the planet’s meteorological patterns. If they had asked the angara then, perhaps they may have an answer now. Instead, Sloane Kelly kicked them out and Reyes pays the price.

He inhales a drag from his-no, _Jean’s_ old cigarette. He can do better; he should do better. The galaxy has worse anti-heroes than him. One of them, he threw down a ravine.

Jean comes behind him. He slips warm hands through his hips to lay them on his waist.

“Did I wake you?” Reyes leans back. His eyes flutter close out of habit.

In response, Jean takes the cig from his hands and drags long strokes on the railing, extinguishing the flame. Reyes frowns until he’s spun around and pushed against the railings.  Jean cups his face like he holds the world in his palms, and kisses him.

“Fuck. Was that how I tasted?” Jean licks his lips after they part. Reyes’ throat is suddenly dry when he realizes Jean is only wearing _his_ shirt.

“It’s an acquired taste,” he pecks his lips, quick and chaste. “You got me addicted to it.”

Jean’s returning kiss is deeper. He curves his whole body against Reyes, pressing skin on skin on skin.

“You do know Dr. Carlyle told me to quit,” Jean murmurs against his mouth after they break.

“I know.”

“Sometimes, I think you don’t.”

Jean isn’t talking about his cigs. “Because I care for you and am concerned for you well-being as your... _partner_?”

“Because you sure cared about my well-being when I was fighting kett and running away from killer dust clouds.”

He cares then. Reyes has lost count of the sleepless nights, of the in-betweens when Jean has sent his last message to his next, days-weeks after. He hides his anxieties through a mask as Jean explains why he hasn’t called or replied in so long. He nods along, smiles when Jean jokes about his adventures. But there’s only so much he can say before he finally utters ‘I want to lock you up somewhere safe so I never have to hear you talk about escaping killer dust clouds.’ It’s selfish; he _is_ a selfish man and Meridian has given him an excuse.

This isn’t about whether Jean _almost_ died or _did_ die. He didn’t. It’s the fear of losing him, of hearing his final words through a recorded tape, of seeing an empty casket and not saying his last goodbye.

“I just…” Jean inhales deep then he continues, “I want to believe nothing has changed since Meridian.”

“Jean, you have an unexplained white stripe on your head. From Meridian,” Reyes points out, a little harsh he thinks.

“Thanks, I was beginning to forget I look like a freak.”

Okay, maybe Reyes is being callous. He slides his hands on Jean’s hips, over the patch of skin where Reyes’ shirt isn’t long enough to cover, and buries his face on his chest. The scent of his shirt is mixed with sex and Jean's unique scent--smoke and ink. 

“What do you want me to do?” he murmurs.

“Give me a chance,” he whispers.

“No.”

“Why? You’ve seen me fight. I can outsnipe your best snipers and I have biotics.”

“No, Jean, no.”

A single syllable tells entire story.

 _No_ is ‘ _Jean, I can’t because my enemies will use you to get to me_.

It’s _Jean, I can’t because I’m too much like my mother and she wasted her later life grieving for an empty casket._

_Jean, I lost you once. Back then, you had every right to leave. I didn’t chase you but fate has a funny way of stringing us together. Now, losing you feels like losing a part of me I never knew I needed._

_Jean, I can’t because I’m a coward, and sometimes, I still question what I did deserve you._

Jean has the option. Jean can run away. Go back to the stars. Go back to exploring the unknown. He almost tells him, yet it stops short of leaving his mouth. He’s too much of a coward to let him leave.

“Tell me,” he clenches and unclenches his fisrs. “Tell me, why you are here?”

He turns to the midnight sky. Millions of stars twinkle over the port’s horizon. From the side, and how the streetlights shine over him, Jean looks younger.  A seraph of salvation brought down by God to save him if there’s anything left to save.

If Reyes tells him, Jean reminds him how much he isn’t and Reyes wonders if this is because of his upbringing; of a missing father sculpting his whole life or so Jean says.

Or it’s just Jean but Jean will never admit it.

“Because I’m a coward.”

That makes the two of them.

It's morning.

As with all mornings in the last few days, Reyes wakes up cold and to an empty spot beside him. Panic rises to his chest. He couldn't have lost him again. 

He sees a note on the beside table. 

 

 _At Sulfur Springs. Come meet me there_ \- _Jean_ _._

At least, he hasn't left him.

When Reyes arrives at Sulfur Springs, he sees Jean basking atop a mountain. He lands.

“Who took you here?” He asks.

Jean basks under the morning sun; his eyes are closed. “You don’t know how much you can get away with when you use the Pathfinder’s name,” he mumbles

“How devious of you.” Reyes sits on the ground, tucking his legs under his chin. He grins, “I’m starting to think I’m a bad influence.”

Jean groans, swinging  an arm over his face.“Don’t say that.”

The crisp dew wafts through the air as morning settles in the Badlands. It’s fresh and clean; it doesn’t belong to the harsh environment at all. Over a year ago, fresh clean air in the Badlands was unthinkable.

“This is wrong,” Jean says. He’s needlessly cryptic. He often is, and Reyes wonders if there’ll ever be a time when Jean isn’t closing himself from the rest of the world, including to him.

“I’m stealing from her. I’m always stealing from her.”

Her. Gabriela Ryder, humanity’s Pathfinder and Jean’s older twin sister. If there’s anything Jean admits guilt about, it’s to his sister. Ironic, when Reyes first met them, Jean criticized every action and decision his sister made.

Reyes stays silent.

“This is her spot, you know,” he rolls over so he faces him. “And we’re stealing it.”

Reyes arches an eyebrow. “Her spot?”

“Her spot, yeah.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t follow. How is this _her_ spot?”

Jean sits up. “It just is...okay.”

Now, he’s being obtuse. Reyes inches closer to him. “So why did you come here?”

“I wanted to get away. Find some place on this planet to just, you know, think?” He picks a stone from the ground and rolls it between his fingers. “Never thought I’d be kidnapped by some freak in a cat mask.”

“Never thought my brain would get fried on Meridian either but it did,” he mutters under his breath.

Reyes takes his hand.

“What you said when we were falling, did you mean it?”

“I do.”

And to Reyes that is enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Aesthetic board** by venatohru
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> Thank you all for reading! Now, I'm sure some of you might be inclined to look up the different myths I included in this fic. I've compiled a [reference page](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1s5Au7xWxW87Vg6UdnK8WkRa3TpW5fi_iM6f7izoRmb4/edit?usp=sharing) which contains all of the myths I used and a couple of extra things. 
> 
> One important thing I do have to mention is all of the Latin phrases used in this fic are given a translation (not counting the chapter titles) except for one, _quam celerrime ad astra_. It translates to "as quickly as possible through the stars."
> 
> It's also the official motto of the Chilean Air Force.


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